Exclude Categories from Feed, Archives, Search, and Home page in WordPress

We often find ourselves looking for the best and easiest way to exclude categories or pages from the navigation menu, the WordPress loop, the category list, the feed, the search, and/or the archive. It’s so easy to forget one of these elements and accidentally let that category slip into the blogstream. We actually wrote about a few WordPress plugins that exclude categories two years ago, but it’s definitely time to revisit this issue.

Recently, Miriam found an AMAZING plugin, Simply Exclude by Paul Menard, which is basically excluding heaven… if there is such a thing.

Advanced Category Excluder vs. Simply Exclude

You may have come across the Advanced Category Excluder plugin, and wonder why we didn’t use that one. Here’s why:

Advanced Category Excluder (ACE) vs.  Simply Exclude:

• Advanced Category Excluder conflicts with the Exclude Pages plugin (described below) which excludes pages  from the nav bar. Simple Exclude does not. When I activated it ACE all the pages that had been excluded with the Exclude Pages plugin appeared on the nav bar.
• ACE also offers you to exclude Pages, which is so annoying since you have to go through a long list of all the pages on your site to see which you want to exclude, and they appear in long lists without any indication of parent pages and sub-pages. Also, there’s no easy way to exclude pages when you are adding or editing a page.
• With ACE you have to first publish a post in a category, and only then will that category appear in the list of categories for exclusion. This means that if you want a category to not appear in the RSS feed etc., your first post in that category has to.

How to manually exclude categories in the theme files

And here are a few tips on how to exclude categories manually from the feed and the loop if you still prefer some good ol’ fashioned manual labor.

How to Manually Exclude a Category from a RSS feed

Place the following code in your functions.php file replacing 12 with your category and commas for additional categories. Tip from Web Kreation.

function myFeedExcluder($query) {

if ($query->is_feed) {

$query->set(‘cat’,'-12′);

}

return $query;

}

add_filter(‘pre_get_posts’,'myFeedExcluder’);

How to Manually Exclude a Category in Feedburner

Under Edit Feed Details add a ?cat=-93 or whatever the category ID number is so it comes out like:  http://domain.com/feed?cat=-93

How to Manually Exclude a Category from the Loop

Add this code BEFORE the loop and change 52 to whatever category you want to exclude

<?php query_posts(’showposts=2&cat=-52′); ?>

Bonus: Easily Exclude Pages

Since we’re discussing excluding stuff from your WordPress blog, here’s a related plugin that we love called Exclude Pages by Simon Wheatley. It’s easy to use and great to give clients for excluding pages from their navigation menu. Exclude Pages adds a checkbox on the edit Page page that users can click to select to exclude the Page they are working on from any place that lists all Pages, like the navigation bar.

Posted in Plugins | No Comments »

The importance of the wp_footer(); plugin API hook

About a week ago I wrote a post about a new WordPress plugin released by Semantinet called Headup. When Semantinet first asked me to install the plugin, it actually didn’t work. They looked into it and realized that the reason for this is that WordPress Garage doesn’t have the wp_footer hook in the footer. I didn’t get too excited about that, and told them there are probably a lot of blogs out there that don’t have this hook, and that they should make sure their plugin is compatible with blogs that don’t have the hook so that it will work in most cases.

They took my advice and modified the plugin, and it worked.

Today, one of our clients contacted us saying that they are trying to install a certain  WordPress analytics plugin, and the code that the plugin produces appears in the footer when they switch to the default theme, but it doesn’t work with the theme we created for them.

I realized that it must be the same missing hook problem, and we looked into it and identified the following hook which indeed was missing from their theme:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>

We added it to their footer.php file, and the plugin started to work!

So take note theme developers for the WordPress community and for private clients (I am including myself in this): it is important to run through a checklist of code snippets that your WordPress themes should contain so that users and clients can enjoy smooth running WordPress sites.

<?php wp_footer(); ?> is just one of them. The WordPress Codex has a very handy page called Theme Development that goes through functionality and code that WordPress themes should have. Here are some important sections:

Theme Template Files List – list of all the possible theme template files.

Plugin API Hooks – list of all the pieces of code needed for plugins that use those hooks to work. Weblog Tools Collection reported that another API hook that’s regularly forgotten in themes is wp_head();.

The best place for wp_footer();

WP Designer (when he was still writing his amazing blog) wrote about this hook and discusses the ideal placement for it within your theme files. He says that often plugins will break your theme if they use this hook, so it’s best to put it in a style-less div container “that your layout doesn’t depend on. Otherwise, you might end up with an incomplete layout while waiting for a slow loading plugin.”

I’m a bit embarrassed that I wasn’t aware of this apparently basic yet important WordPress theme issue. But I hope that by admitting my lack of knowledge I can help some of you solve plugin problems or theme problems.

Posted in Plugins | 3 Comments »

Headup Semantic WordPress plugin automatically adds rich content to your blog

A new WordPress plugin called Headup was released about a week ago by SemantiNet, a startup dedicated to developing Semantic Web technologies and platforms. The plugin works on top of the company’s existing technology, and automatically adds rich content to terms that appear in your blog posts.

I installed it here on WordPress Garage so you can see it in action, but basically the way it works is key terms get a dotted orange underline (which helps differentiate them from your regular links), and when you mouse-over those terms a pop-up window appears with information tabs. These tabs display the following content:

1. A short summary about the key-term (Wikipedia style information)
2. Related News, Articles & Posts
3. Related images from Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa, etc.
4. Related Tweets
5. Related Videos from Youtube
6. Related Products from Amazon
7. How your readers Facebook friends relate to the key term (requires readers to approve Facebook connection)

For geographic locations the pop-up will display a Map tab, and for films a Trailer tab will be displayed.

The field of semantic technologies is so new that Headup is only one of 9 WordPress plugins that have “semantic web” as a tag in the plugin directory.

How to install the Headup plugin

1. Go to “Add New” in the WordPress plugin menu.
2. Enter “headup” as the search term to find the plugin in the directory. There will only be one result for this term.
3. Click the “Install” button on the far right, and then activate the plugin.
4. You can configure some settings for the plugin under Settings > Headup for WordPress. There you can choose a maximum number of annotations to display on a page, how many times the same term should be annotated, and whether hyperlinks should be annotated as well.

It will take about an hour before the key terms on your site start displaying the dotted orange highlights. Here’s a short video explaining how to install the plugin:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G20whW3yOs[/youtube]

Here’s another video overview of the Headup Blog Widget and WordPress plugin.

Why would you use this plugin?

The creators of the plugin say that by offering this type of content, you can “reduce bounce rates and increase your readers’ engagement.” Since I tend to judge the world by my own preferences, I was a bit skeptical as to whether such a feature could really achieve those goals since I prefer to find my own info rather than have it dictated to me. Luckily, my pal Mike works at SemantiNet so I decided to ask him a few questions about this plugin, their technology, the semantic web in general, and whether he agrees that Cookies and Cream is Ben & Jerry’s best ice cream flavor.

WPG: Mike, tell me a bit about SemantiNet and what you do there.

Mike: Whereas much of the activity related to semantic web is still very much academic and theoretical, SemantiNet’s products are among the few examples of practical applications of next generation web technology anyone can enjoy today.

What our technology does is identify key-terms in publications & blogs and then provide relevant and personalized related content in real-time. For example, say you’ve written a post about Barack Obama recently being elected in Oslo to be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. What we’ll do is automatically identify the term “Barack Obama” as being president of the US, and suggest content related to him, and identify the term “Oslo” as being a city, and suggest content related to it too.

The big deal here is that the technology realizes that Oslo, the city, has different attributes from Obama, the person, so it will offer different types of information for each. For example, Oslo’s Headup results would include a city map, while Obama’s would not.

As for me, I’m a Project Manager in the company and am responsible for managing the company’s site and blog widget.

WPG: Call me an ignoramus Mike (don’t look so happy about the opportunity), but I still don’t quite get what the semantic web is about. Please explain and make me feel more intelligent.

Mike: What makes companies like SemantiNet exciting is that their understanding of online content goes beyond the basic key-word matching we’re familiar with from current search technologies, and enters the realm of true object identification. This is a fancy way of saying that whereas today, if you search for “Apple” you’ll get results related to the company and the fruit indiscriminately, the vision for Semantic Web is that the same search will deliver results that relate not only to “Apple” but also to “Steve Jobs,” “iPhones,” ”iPods,” etc. even if the word “Apple” isn’t explicitly mentioned in the text results.

For more information about the Semantic Web I recommend seeing Sir Tim Berners Lee’s excellent TED talk on the subject.

WPG: How can bloggers and publishers offer this type of rich information on their own sites?

Mike: To date we have three products people can use to get a better feeling for what this does: the Headup Firefox addon, the Headup publisher and blogger widget, and most recently, the Headup WordPress plugin.

WPG: Why should bloggers install the Headup plugin?

Mike: Bloggers who install our widget will gain longer engagement times and reduced bounce rates. Besides these advantages the widget has the ability, via the “Friends” tab, to enable readers to personalize their reading experience and see how the key terms you blogged about relate to their circle of friends. To the best of my knowledge no other widget out there has this capability.

A significant benefit is the fact that everything I’ve described so far is entirely automated. All you as a blogger need to do is a single one time installation of the plugin and within about an hour your entire archive will be covered. This level of automation is again, to the best of my knowledge, unprecedented.

WPG: How does the widget promote engagement time and reduce bounce rate?

Mike: The widget reduces your reader’s incentive to browse away by letting them access all the related content they need right on top of your pages. Why go somewhere else when you have everything you need right where you are?

In your interview with Lior Haner from Yedda you asked, quite rightly, how Yedda was solving bloggers’ need to have conversations take place in their blog. We don’t deal in conversations, however as far as complementary and related content is concerned, we’ve pretty much guaranteed bloggers that their audience won’t have to open another tab or browse away to get the little extra that was missing.

WPG: Can bloggers contact you with questions?

Mike: For sure! I’m personally available for any support needed both on twitter @headup and via email – miked[at]semantinet[dot]com. Don’t be Shy!

WPG: Anything else you’d care to add?

Mike: I agree that Cookies and Cream is Ben & Jerry’s best flavor.

WPG: Of course you do! That’s why we’re pals.

So there you have it. I’d love it if you, our readers, would check out this new feature here and tell me what you think: is it useful, annoying, or somewhere in between?

Posted in Plugins | 3 Comments »

How to Change Permalink Structure in WordPress without Duplicate Content

Recently we had a client who wanted to change their Permalink structure from

Old Permalink structure: /%author%/%category%/%postname%/

to:

New Permalink structure: /%author%/%category%/%postname%/%post_id%/

so that they would qualify for Google News. Apparently you need at least 3 digits in your URL in order to qualify for Google News.

I wanted to simply change the Permalink structure by going to Settings>Permalinks in WordPress. However, the problem is that Google sees 2 URLs for the same post which could cause Google to penalize you for duplicate content:

Google would see both the old and new Permalink structure for the same content:

For example, Google would see:

(old) http://example.com/Rebecca/News/MyPost/

and

(new) http://example.com/Rebecca/News/MyPost/222

So we need to make sure the old Permalink structure has a 301 redirect to the new Permalink structure.

Thankfully, after trying many plugins, we finally found and successfully implemented this plugin: Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin

The directions on the site are very old and quite confusing.

Here’s how to use Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin

1. Download, Install and activate the plugin
2. Go to Settings>Permalinks and copy down your old permalink structure
3. While you’re in Settings>Permalinks, change the Permalink structure to your new permalink structure
4. Go to Settings>Permalink Redirect and where it says “Old Permalink Structures”, paste in your old permalink structure

That’s it.

Posted in Plugins | 9 Comments »

Best 4 Wordpress Calendar plugins

Here’s a review of 4 of the most comprehensive calendar plugins that Wordpress has to offer. I tried out each one and tracked the features, pros, and cons.  Which calendar are you using? Send a link so we can see some more examples.  For a full list Wordpress calendar plugins, click here.

Still in search of a perfect calendar…

I still have hopes and dreams that the perfect calendar is out there somewhere, but I can’t seem to find The One. I’m looking for a Wordpress compatible calendar that can do the following:

• recurring events – monthly, weekly, bi-weekly
• month view
• list view with option to see 15 results for upcoming events and then to click “Next” to see next results
• import a csv file of ongoing events
• Advanced search functionality to do the following. For example, search for Events in New York City on December 1. Or to search by venue, city, topic, and other categories.
• RSS events feed
• user level management – a way for different organizations to submit and manage their own events
• Email notifications when someone has added or edited an event

Event Calendar 3 by Alex Tingle

Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar.

Features

• iCal feed subscription
• sidebar widget – monthly & list view
• easy admin to add events from Write>Post
• links to a post for more details

Cons

• no recurring events
• no RSS event feed
• no large view calendar
• no categories
• no fields within events such as location, contact person
• no user level management

Calendar by Kieran O’Shea

A simple calendar plugin for WordPress that allows you to manage your events and display them in list or month format.

Features

• Monthly view of events
• Mouse-over details for each event
• Events can have a timestamp (optional)
• Events can display their author (optional)
• Events can span more than one day
• Multiple events per day possible
• Events can repeat on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis
• Repeats can occur indefinitely or a limited number of times
• Easy to use events manager in admin dashboard
• Sidebar function/Widget to show todays events
• Sidebar function/Widget to show upcoming events
• Comprehensive options panel for admin
• Modifiable CSS using the options panel
• Optional drop down boxes to quickly change month and year
• User groups other than admin can be permitted to manage events
• Events can be placed into categories
• Categories system can be switched on or off
• Pop up javascript calendars help the choosing of dates
• Events can be links pointing to a location of your choice

Cons

• no events feed
• no fields within events such as location, contact person
• no search feature
• no bi-weekly recurring events
• no way to import a csv of recurring events

Gigs Calendar by Dan Coulter

This plugin is designed for bands touring but can be used for any events.

Features

• list view
• amazing options in the admin panel – arrange table view of events, link to Google maps, etc.
• events feed
• fields for city, venue, start time, contact details
• once you select a venue, the contact details appear automatically! Big time saver.
• each event links to the details
• user level management

Cons

• no month calendar view
• no recurring events
• no way to search/sort by month, venue, city, date

Gigpress by Derek Hogue

Another plugin designed for bands touring but can be used for any events.

Features

• list view
• user level management
• events feed
• fields for venue, venue website, address, country, etc.
• connects to posts with a link that says “related post” [I think it should say "More details"]

Cons

• no month calendar view
• no recurring events
• doesn’t connect to a post – all the info needs to be written in the table which isn’t good if you have a lot of text
  
• no way to search/sort by month, venue, city, date

Easy PHP Calendar Plugin

EasyPHPCalendar is a script you can buy for $20. To integrate it into the Wordpress admin, you can use the Wordpress plugin. This is by far the most comprehensive calendar you can use in conjunction with Wordpress. It has tons of features, template options, and display options. Just beware of the clunky setup which may take a few hours to do properly. Also, there are certain features which can’t  be modified because they’re encrypted by the Calendar developers. Luckily, the support forum on the site is pretty active.

Features

• mySQL database support
• Flat-file database support – No mySQL server required!
• Single events, recurring events and floating events plus multiple categories
• Complete and easy event and setup administration
• Mouse-over and pop-up event details
• Customizable categories and multiple event administrators
• Rich event descriptions including font sizes/colors and images
• different templates for list view and month view
• active support forum and RSS feed for latest entries in forum
• See more details

Cons

• complex setup
• weak search and filtering
• no easy way to import a CSV of recurring events
• no events feed
• some encrypted code which may leave you helpless if you want to modify certain functionality

[Update ]

WP-Events by Arnan de Gans

The plugin features a straightforward user interface in the Wordpress dashboard to add/edit and delete events and set some options. Events allows you to list Events on a seperate page or in the sidebar, or both. Here you can list Old (archived) events future events and if you want, events happening today. When you create or edit an event you can set it to be archived. So that it remains listed. Optionally non-archived events are automatically deleted one day (24 hours) after they expire. Many more options are available and Events is completely customizable to your theme in an easy and flexible manner.

Features:

• Widget for themes that support it
• non-widget option: Code to put into templates
• Separate page for events
• Completely customizable layout
• Multi language
• Link events to pages/posts
• Set a start and end time (duration) for events
• Set locations for events
• Show events in your sidebar
• Archive events
• Edit existing events
• Auto remove old, non-archived events
• Unlimited dateformats to show events dates
• Options page
• Set a date and time to the minute
• Set a message to show before and another one to show after the event occurs
• User level restriction
• Management page
• Set amount of events to show in the sidebar

Cons:

Since the events in this plugin are separate from posts,  the integration with linking and feeds is not so great. Other than that, I really like all the options and customization available. Definitely worth trying out.

• No events feed – I wanted to offer my readers a way to get the events feed but because the events are entries rather than posts, I couldn’t figure out an easy way to do it.
• Page/post relationship links – You can add a post and then create a link from the event to the post, but this seems like double the work and not so intuitive.. I guess I could link events to the main events page for more info, but then there is no direct event link to send your friends or refer back to it.
• Date format – the date shows up as March 04, 2009 at 04:00pm and I couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of those initial 0’s. who needs ‘em?

Posted in Plugins | 52 Comments »

I want a WordPress plugin to…

So you’ve got a shiny new WordPress blog, and you really want to add a cool feature that either demands programming the feature into your site, or even better, finding the perfect plugin so that you can add the feature with a few clicks.

The conventional way of finding plugins is to either search the WordPress plugin directory, or to do a search. Well, here’s a new way that is actually really smart and useful – visit this site: I want a WordPress Plugin to … 450+ solutions.

At the top of the page, there is a hyperlinked list of related features for plugins, like Related Authors, Admin, Stats, Posts, Tags, etc.

You click on one of those links, and it takes you to a list of plugins that can help you achieve that feature. So for example, if I click on Calendars, I get a list of 4 plugins that can help me add a calendar to my WordPress blog. I personally know that there are many more calendar-related plugins for adding calendars to your blog, but you can submit more plugins for them to add to the list.

I think the idea behind this site is good, but it really needs a lot of community contribution in order to make it more complete.

I want a WordPress Plugin to … 450+ solutions

Posted in Plugins, Themes | 4 Comments »

When a WordPress plugin for foreclosures is released, you know it’s a recession

I always think I’ve seen everything, until something even crazier comes along. Foreclosure.com, a site that lists nationwide foreclosure data, has released a WordPress plugin that adds foreclosure listings to their Web sites.

The WordPress Foreclosure Listings Plugin delivers a complete real estate search and navigation environment quickly and easily by querying the Foreclosure.com database in real-time. Once a partner activates the program, the plugin will automatically create a WordPress page and a search widget.

This has got to be one of the most depressing plugins in existence. Profiting from people who are getting kicked out of their homes seems cruel. We know banks do it, but banks are cruel so it suits them.

When the vultures hover like this, it makes me think that maybe we are heading towards a recession, and maybe it really has already hit the US. Scary.

Posted in Plugins | 2 Comments »

Automatic thumbnail image resizing options

I manage a few blogs that use thumbnail images to spruce up the appearance of the site, and make it more enjoyable for readers. As we’ve discussed here in the past, an efficient method for adding thumbnails to your blog is with custom fields. But finding the right image, resizing it (ugh), uploading, etc., is such a pain in the neck that I often find myself not blogging because I can’t face it. On one of my blogs, I’ve just decided to post without the images, since I know it’s the only way I’ll ever publish anything.

So imagine my delight when I found the following two fantastic solutions: Justin Tadlock’s brilliant Get the Image WordPress plugin and Darren Hoyt’s TimThumb PHP Script. Both the plugin and the script take most of the annoying work out of inserting thumbnail images in your blog.

Justin Tadlock’s Get the Image plugin

This plugin works in three steps (as explained on Tadlock’s blog):

1. It activates a script that gets an image either by custom field input or post attachment.
2. Then it tells the script what the default image size should be. It tells the script to look for the WordPress-generated thumbnail if there are no custom field images found. You can use the values “thumbnail,” “medium,” or “full” for this (those are three image sizes WordPress generates).
3. If there are no images found, the script displays a default image found at “/wp-content/my-image.jpg.”

As Justin says, this has a lot of potential applications – you can use to for feature images, for displaying images in your sidebar, etc. He even offers to help users implement the plugin on their blogs if they ask in his forums.

Darren Hoyt’s Tim Thumb PHP Script

Hoyt originally created this script for use in his Mimbo Pro premium WordPress theme. To use it, you need to complete two steps:

1. Copy the source code into a new document called ‘timthumb.php’ and place it in a folder on your site (ex: /scripts/).
2. Call the source code from the place in your theme files where you want the resized image to appear as follows:
   <img src="/scripts/timthumb.php?src=/images/whatever.jpg&h=150&w=150&zc=1" alt="" />

This script is more complicated than Tadlock’s plugin, and when I tried it I couldn’t get it to work. But many people are happily using it in their themes.

Talk about filling a need. If you want to include thumbnail images on your blog without the headache, this plugin or script is a must.

Get The Image WordPress Plugin

TimThumb PHP Script

Posted in Plugins | 6 Comments »

Create drop-down menus with WordPress plugins and themes

Drop-down menus are a great way to improve the usability of your site. They allow you to offer more information without taking up too much real estate, as well as organize your content in a useful way for your readers.

But coding a drop-down menu can be a bit of a PITA (no, not the bread that holds the falafel). Lucky for us, some of our fellow web-geeks have created easy ways for us to add drop-down menus to our websites and WordPress blogs.

WordPress Drop-down menu plugins

1. The Linux and Web Development Blog has a WordPress plugin that adds a drop-down menu to your navigation bar on your WordPress blog. In order to activate this plugin, you need to upload it, activate it, and add the following code snippet to your header file:

<?php
if (function_exists('get_menu'))
get_menu('topmenu');
?>

Once you have done this, log in to your site, and customize the menu on the CSS Menu option page.

2. Ryan Hellyer has developed a super-duper plugin/generator combo that allows you to create and heavily customize a drop-down menu in your WordPress blog. Features:

• Easy to customize styles with his handy Suckerfish Dropdowns Generator
• W3C valid HTML and CSS
• Only uses Javascript for annoying browsers like IE6
• If you want your visitors to be able to access your menu with their keyboard, Ryan offers the “Suckerfish Javascript for keyboard accessibility” code for including in your site.
• Compatible with every existing browser (almost) and their uncles.

You can’t say Ryan’s not thorough! See the drop-down menu in action on the Suckerfish Dropdowns Generator page.

To use his Suckerfish WordPress plugin:

1. Download the plugin from his site and activate it.
2. Go over to his Suckerfish Dropdowns Generator and customize at will. You can change pretty much every style used for the drop-down: colors, background image, font sizes, families, weight, opacity, padding, etc. Ryan has also prepared 10 ready-made styles for drop-down menus that you can use instead of fiddling around with your own styles.
3. Once you are ready, click Submit Query and the generator will produce some CSS code.
4. Coyp and paste the code into your WordPress admin (under Options). The generated styles will only work with unordered lists with an ID of #suckerfishnav. In addition, this whole plugin/generator thing may not play nice with our least-favorite browser (IE6), so Ryan recommends using his handy Suckerfish Javascript for Internet Explorer code with your site.

3. Dtabs (Dynamic Tabs) wordpress plugin by David Burton allows themes to include an optional user controlled dynamically tabbed navigation system with the possibility of drop down menus. This plugin only works with dTab enabled themes, of which there is currently one: Kubrick Tabs. However, the author provides instructions on how to dTab enable a theme on the plugin page. You can see a working example on the author’s site. The plugin is also available on the WordPress.org plugins directory.

4. A few more drop-down menu plugins:

• wp_jquery_dropdownmenu plugin
• Wordpress CSS Drop-down Menu

WordPress Themes with drop-down menus

1. The Jillij theme is a one-column theme based on Kubrick that has transformed the vertical sidebar into a horizontal drop-down navigation bar that appears under the header image. The drop-down menu is based on Widgets, so you can modify what appears on the nav bar by changing the widgets.

2. Ryan Hellyer has also created a theme that has his Suckerfish menu built-in: Aqua Vaccinium WordPress theme. I have to admit that I don’t love the look of the theme (sorry Ryan!), but the built-in Suckerfish menu can be useful for people who prefer not to use a plugin.

(Ryan does have a theme which I really like, which he uses on his blog: Hellish Simplicity.)

Posted in Plugins, Themes | 36 Comments »

Audio Player WordPress plugin automatically adds audio player to posts

Amazingly, I have never had to deal with podcast or audio files before in a WordPress blog or site. But a recent client needed a way to easily and attractively add mp3 files to her posts.

At first I tried the Podcasting plugin, but I didn’t have much luck. Then I tried the Audio Player Wordpress plugin, which worked great – it’s easy to activate and configure, and isn’t complicated for the blog owner to use.

There are various ways to use it, but here’s the way that I like best:

1. Upload and activate the plugin.
2. Go to Options > Audio Player.
3. Under where it says “How do you want to use the audio player?” select the second option: Enclosure integration (for podcasters). This option detects if there is a link to an MP3 file in your post, and automatically adds a player for that file to the end of the post.

There are a few advantages to this format:

1. You don’t have to set up a special folder for the audio files. You don’t really have to for the other options either, but if you don’t you make the user’s life a bit more difficult.
2. The user doesn’t have to remember to use any types of brackets or code
3. The post can include a flash player and a download link, so that people have the choice to listen the file online or offline. The other options that the plugin offers take the link and create a flash player from them, which means there isn’t a link to download the podcast.

Here’s an example: I really like this song by Yael Naim, an Israeli singer, which was used in the new Macbook Air commercial. You can download the link by right-clicking on Yael’s name above, or enjoy the song here in my snazzy new audio player (I hope).

Posted in Plugins | 16 Comments »